Dong Xing Road

Road construction is mostly done by manpower and unprotected hands by workers wearing large gumboots and sometimes a cap or helmet.

Often simple tools are used and once in a while an outdated road construction machine was around.

Just over a year ago a Chinese construction company started the big project of improving the roads in our area.

Local guys were doing the digging, carrying stones and other rough jobs involved; supervision was always present, usually one or two Chinese men sitting on a stone under a tree closeby.

What had been a bad dirt road with deep holes dangerously filled up with water and big stones during rains, became a cemented flat road with an open drainage on one side.

Even bajaj and bodaboda’s do not prefer the route anymore.

Only pedestrians still had to walk through deep sand or sticky mud alongside.

Once it was all finished a few road signs appeared informing us this is now Dong Xing Road.

Soon it was used as a thoroughfare for cars going up and down to town trying to avoid the notorious traffic jams on the larger roads.

But now all is silent around, just one or two cars pass — even bajaj and bodaboda’s do not prefer the route anymore. What happened?

Somebody decided the long overdue drainage project to relieve Kinondoni and adjacent areas of the usual bad flooding during the rainy season had to happen now, before the long and heavy rains are expected.

In short, as the project is being finalised, we remain with broken up roads, big piles of sand alongside and lots of mud and stones and holes where the road once used to be.

Maybe drainage will have improved but the road is no more.

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